The life span of a power supply, or mean time between failures (MTBF) is estimated at roughly 100,000 hours. Power supplies for servers, industrial control equipment, or other equipment where reliability is important may incorporate redundancy to allow for continued operation in case of failure of the main or primary assembly. Redundancy means duplicating some or all of the components in the power supply so that there is effectively little to no downtime in case of failure. However, duplication of components results in added costs and increased size.
There is a need to increase the MTBF of a power supply while reducing the costs associated with a redundant system.